I sit down at one of the Learning Center's computers and start poking around the home screen. No shit, full internet access. This might work out after all. I go straight to the summer music festival footage. They have a live, stage view video of the Dorothy Twister concert. Is that my blue beanie in the middle of the mosh pit? Fuck yes. The only problem with this otherwise completely awesome and completely "authorized" event (fuck you, David) is that I attended it alone. I put the headphones on, but no sound comes out. Apparently they use one of those ancient headphone jacks. Where the hell is the actual computer so I can plug these things in?
Maybe I was wrong about this shit working out. I am totally not down for the pillow party over on the couches—one guy and five girls babbling like they're in a waiting room television talk show. Wish I had a remote so I could mute them. Ah, shit.
"Name's Tommy."
This kid looks like he could be a ghost in a Saturday morning cartoon. He's pale enough that I feel like putting on a pair of sunglasses to deal with the glare of the overhead lights off his forehead. He's wearing a black sweater vest over his popped-collar white dress shirt, black slacks, and a matching pair of polished black shoes so spotless he could have bought them this morning on the way to school. When he smiles, I need another pair of sunglasses over the original pair to deal with the metallic shine of his braces. I wouldn't be surprised if he pressure washes them every morning after brushing his teeth.
"Did you walk here straight out of a coming of age novel?" I ask. "Holy shit."
Tommy sits down at the computer next to me without an invitation and just stares at me instead of actually, you know, using the computer for its intended purpose.
"That's funny," Tommy says. "Yeah, they keep it locked up until class begins. You gotta wait for them to tell you it's cool before you start listening to stuff."
"Do you have a key? You know to pick the lock?"
"Nah, it's better for everyone if you don't try any of that. Trust me, I know from personal experience."
I throw the headphones down on table.
"Hey, those things are expensive. You know they got all this from the Prescott Foundation? Huge donation. That's where all this tech comes from."
Tech. Prescott. I put the fingers of my right hand into the shape of a gun, point them at the side of my head, crook my thumb, and tilt my head to the left with a jerk. Tommy shows me his braces.
"I forgot to ask you your name," he says.
"Chloe."
"Chloe what?"
"Chloe Price."
"Oh, like The Chloe Price Is Right."
"Yep. I've never heard that one before."
"Can you guess my last name?"
"Uh, shit? As in, I don't give one?
"That's funny," he says. "Most people say Hilfiger, but it's actually Lauren. I live up in Manhattan Beach."
"Sucks to be you."
"You're a riot, Chloe. Want to know what my uncle's name was?"
"Do I have a choice?"
"Seymour Butts," he says. "Technically, it was Seymour H. Butts."
"Technically."
"What do you think the H stands for?"
"Hella?"
"What does that mean?"
"I don't know. Just something I picked up."
"Huh. Well, it stands for Harry."
"Did he work under the bleachers at a football stadium?"
"No. He worked on submarines in the Navy."
I nod my head and stare at the monitor. Tommy starts up with some fucked up snorting laugh that makes me regret ever having said anything to him.
"Seymour Harry Butts. I get it now. I think we're going to get along great."
He walks back over to the girls sitting on the couches. They look way too happy to see him.
"Hey, buddy!" one of them says.
Fantastic. Well, I guess this kid's in the Friend Zone whether I want him to be or not. Class starts up and instead of doing that shit where you introduce yourselves to one another and talk about all the stuff you're going to do with your life that everyone forgets five minutes later, we start working on some life skills assignment on the computer. To my surprise, I work straight through the first designated break period. It helps that they made a game out of teaching me more than I ever wanted to know about applying for jobs. I also beat the shit out of the test at the end of it.
"Hey, Tommy," I say. "I got hired as the Head Paper Pusher."
"Yeah, I saw that. Not bad."
"I'll let you know if they have any openings."
I decide to celebrate by heading out to the parking lot and smoking one of the cigarettes I pilfered from my rations when Mom "wasn't looking"—it also happens to be my last one, because unless Rachel reappears or Mom has a change of heart, I have no cash flow. Sure as shit, Tommy What's-his-nuts follows me out here like my cat Bongo used to do at home. His food dish would be full and he'd still come into the kitchen to see if he could score some leftovers.
"Hey, Chloe," Tommy says. "You're supposed to let me win at that stuff."
"Win at what, life skills? I was just doing the assignment, dude. I didn't know there would be a fucking leaderboard at the end of it."
I take a drag off my cigarette and exhale it into the pavement.
"Nice," he says. He chews his gum like his jaws will freeze shut if he's not chomping at a million miles a minute. "Can you do smoke rings?"
"Now that you ask…" I take another drag and hold it in for a second while I look him in the eyes. I release a stream of smoke straight up into the air. "Nope."
"So, yeah. Everyone lets me win. It kind of makes me look bad if I don't do well. My parents have high expectations for me and I'm not gonna get to go to the university I want to if I don't get really good grades here."
"I thought this little section of Arcadia High was the place where great expectations go to die."
"Spooky choice of words. I don't know. We learn to make the best of it. At least I do."
I finish off my cigarette, throw it down onto the sidewalk, and smash it with the heel of my boot.
"Let me help you with that," says Tommy.
He picks it up for me and walks it over to a grey upright plastic penis standing next to the red brick wall of the building's exterior. The cigarette butt disappears into a little hole on the side of it.
"There's other things I can help you with. When I get the high score, the girls and I like to celebrate."
"What, are you running a fucking harem? In your wet dreams, kid."
"No, it's not like that."
Tommy looks at me with a weird smile when reaches into his pocket. This little shit and his elaborately coiffed hair look like they should be sporting a varsity letter jacket and maybe an expensive camera. I wonder if Tommy gets these girls pregnant and his dad ships them off to parts unknown. I wonder if Tommy is an egotistical fucking asshole.
"You play ball," he says, "I can hook you up."
Before he can even unfold his man-purse, I grab Tommy by the buttons of his nice, white dress shirt with its freshly popped collar and shove him up against the wall. His billfold falls to the ground. It's so stuffed that it lands edge-up and stays there.
"I will knock you the fuck out," I say.
Tommy puts his hands up. His face looks calm. The chattering around us has stopped.
"Hey, Chloe," Tommy says. "There's no need for that. I didn't mean anything by it. I was just—"
"I'm sick and fucking tired of people who think they can swing their wallets and their dicks around to get whatever they want. I don't give a fuck about your stupid fucking scores, your stupid fucking benefits, or your stupid fucking name, you stupid fuck. You ever try to fuck with me again and you'll be wearing those braces outside your mouth."
I release his shirt. He slumps down onto his ass with his back against the brick wall. The other kids stare at Tommy, but just keep talking like nothing at all ever happened. Nobody even looks at me. I shove my hands into my pockets while I wait for the authority figures to show up and sentence me to an eternity in detention.
Nothing happens.
"Why isn't anyone busting me right now?"
"Mostly 'cause we don't fight," says Tommy. "Everyone gets along. You ever been in jail?"
"Nope."
He stands up. One of his harem dolls comes over and adjusts his collar without so much as a glance in my direction.
"I didn't think so," he says. "I have plenty of relatives who went to jail. They tell me that once you're there, they got you. You're all in the same club playing by the same rules hoping that one day, you'll get out of there. Fighting just adds time to your sentence. Same thing here."
"I'm just tired of people thinking they can flash cash instead of being decent fucking human beings."
"Yeah, my bad," says Tommy. "I guess I was so used to assuming everyone knew."
"Knew what?"
"I got cancer. The kind you don't recover from. Fifty-fifty I live long enough to graduate from college."
"For real?"
"That's as for real as it gets."
"Is that why all the girls are so nice to you?"
"Maybe. A lot of them come from busted backgrounds, too."
"That's why you hook them up with party favors? Like, coke? Weed?"
Tommy laughs.
"Holy hell, Chloe. Nah, just sugar bombs." He picks up his wallet and shows me the red and green wrapped candies stuffed inside it. "Only drugs I deal in are the ones I take for cancer, and that stuff just makes the pain go away for a while."
"Yeah. I know what you mean. People think I smoke to get fucked up, but all it does is give me the ability to get out fucking bed and take showers."
"It doesn't make you feel better at all?"
I stare at my boots.
"Does that even mean anything when nothing ever changes?" I look up at the sky. Clouds float by so slowly it looks like they're standing still. "My girlfriend was gone all summer and now she doesn't talk to me any more. My dad died three years ago. Mom replaced him with the biggest asshole in the world. I've been dealing with it by cutting myself."
"That's some heavy stuff," Tommy says. "I have friends who have been in some of those places, too. The girls in this class, a lot of them have relatives in rehab centers and foster homes. I used to see the single moms in Manhattan Beach at the bus station on Fridays. They'd celebrate another week of not shooting up by loading up a convoy full of baby strollers and heading off to the shopping mall or the theater or to some place that didn't remind them of all the garbage they'd put themselves through. We all know how it goes. Any of that make sense to you?"
"Fucking up? Absolutely."
"Sometimes they graduate permanently when they overdose. That's how my aunt Louise went."
"Ouch."
"You ever think about your own death? I mean, in an off-hand kind of way."
"Off-hand? Not exactly. Usually I just think about my dad."
"You ever talk to him?"
"In my dreams. But I don't like those conversations."
"Why not?"
"They end."
"They don't have to. I keep a journal. I write to myself, my dead grandpa, my aunt Louise, even to myself after I've passed on. 'Hey Tommy, what's heaven like?' 'Oh, it's pretty awesome. I have tons of girlfriends and we party every day.' Helps me keep my stuff together, you know?"
"Yeah. I'm not really much for writing, though. What would I even say?"
"You're writing to dead people. Shakespeare's dead, too. What's he gonna care?"
"True." I straighten his already straightened collar. "Sorry about that shit."
"Don't worry about it."
I put my arm around his shoulders. He puts his arm around my waist.
"All right, kid," I say. "Show me how to let you get the high score."
